Superbug outbreak kills 17 patients in a single hospital

A virulent strain of the superbug Clostridium difficile has killed 17 patients at one hospital.

Since the beginning of December, the equivalent of one patient a week has died at the James Paget University Hospital in Norfolk after contracting a mutated form of the bug.

Another 16 survived - but five of them needed major surgery afterwards.

It is the most deadly outbreak to date of the stomach bug, which thrives in dirty wards and can survive for months on hospital floors, furniture and toilet seats.

Managers at the 500-bed NHS hospital could face legal action if poor hygiene is proved a factor in the spread of the 027 strain, which produces 20 times as much toxin as more common forms of the bug.

C. difficile now claims twice as many lives as MRSA.

Despite pledges in 2004 from the then health secretary John Reid that deaths from superbugs would be halved by 2008, mortality rates have soared.

Figures released last month showed the bugs were involved in 5,436 deaths in 2005 alone.

But some experts believe many more infections go unrecorded and estimate the true figure to be nearer 27,600. C. difficile is carried in the gut of up to eight per cent of healthy adults without causing ill effects.

However, when hospital patients are given strong doses of antibiotics their 'healthy' bacteria are killed off, leaving the gut vulnerable to infection by drug-resistant C. difficile, which causes severe diarrhoea.

The 027 strain has been known to kill patients of all ages, whereas more common forms of the bacteria claim the lives of the frail and elderly.

Nick Coveney, director of nursing and patient services at the James Paget hospital, said some of the patients who died were under 65. He would not give the ages of the youngest victims, saying only that none was a child.

The bug was a "contributory factor" in the 17 deaths at the hospital in Gorleston between December 1 and March 28, rather than the cause of death, with the majority of patients aged over 65.

The presence of C. diff was recorded on death certificates.

Mr Coveney said: "This strain of C. diff is much more virulent than any strain we have experienced previously.

"As a result, a small number of patients with C. diff have experienced more severe complications and illnesses.

"Since December 1 there have been 17 patients who have experienced complications from C. diff that have contributed to their death."

He said five more had undergone major bowel surgery and 11 were currently being treated for C. diff. Mr Coveney stressed that as soon as the outbreak was identified, the hospital had spent £400,000 on cleaning the wards, taking on an extra 15 cleaners.

Vanessa Bourne, of the Patients' Association, said: "All hospitals should be making hygiene their top priority. Superbugs are now killing twice as many people each year as die on the roads, and they are all deaths which could be prevented.

"I think it is quite possible that patients, or their families, could sue over this if hygiene has been a factor in the deaths."

The 027 strain, which came to Britain from America around four years ago, has been identified in 40 hospitals around the UK.

There have been two other major outbreaks in recent years - in Leicester, where 49 patients died at three hospitals, and at Stoke Mandeville in Aylesbury, where there were 65 deaths over three years.

However, neither involved so many deaths in such a short time as in Norfolk.

Mr Coveney said that as well as implementing a rigorous new hygiene regime, the James Paget hospital had changed its antibiotic prescribing policy, giving patients more 'targeted' drugs rather than those which killed off all of the bacteria in their gut.

In addition, no more than two visitors per bed are being allowed, they have to wash their hands in alcohol gel when they enter wards and are not allowed to sit on patients' beds.